Starting Over

Good morning, my friends. There was a red sky this morning. I happen to know it isn't because a storm is coming. I know this because Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding Willamette Valley are under the first ever extreme heat advisory. Hot weather will arrive tomorrow. I suspect what we're seeing in our red sky is from wildfire smoke.

Smitty doesn't mind the heat. He soaks it up when the sun shines through the sliding glass door in the afternoons. Until he gets too hot. Then he moves to the shade to cool off, then back to the sun to soak it up. It's important to get your Vitamin D. That's "D" for "Daring" if you must know.

Sadie was my helper cat in the sewing room yesterday.

With her help, I finished off August's kitten in a teacup. I made the mistake of cutting the end of his tail from white fabric. It blends in too much with the background fabric.

It kind of makes it look as if the cat was too helpful when I was cutting and measuring. We have a few close calls around here most every sewing day.

So I laid those pieces side by side and it seemed an easy enough fix. I was able to switch out that piece in about five minutes, and then I sewed the whole thing together.

Here are the six blocks I have for this quilt so far.

So I still need to make blocks for June and July. For all I've whined about this pattern, August's block went together without too much trouble. I think I've made all the mistakes I can possibly make with these blocks, and my notes and highlighting helped when I sewed this one together. It probably has given me a fool's confidence that I can sew a second one together without feeling a need to use my rotary cutter to slit my own throat. Before I turned out the lights for the day, I chose fabrics for July's kitten, and I'll get started on that today.

Now let's talk about the thing I'm starting over. I've been showing you peeks of my "Sashiko" project. It's been going okay, but I've had doubts about whether its actually working. I was intending to continue on to the bitter end, and then just hope that it works. Toward the end of the day, I saw something that caused me to change my mind about it. Knowing I'm starting over, I can show you my first idea. I was going to try to do this image of Denali from our Alaska trip using different shades of blues and grays. Here's the original image.

To give myself some lines to follow, I printed it on Sticky Fabri-Solvy and then stuck it to the white background. Then, I used the lines in the photo to begin outlining the mountain peaks in different colors. With the photo there, it's hard to know if the stitching will make sense once I've washed away the Sticky Fabri-Solvy.

I could look at the back, and hmmm....it's still hard to tell. Having the threads buried and knots showing, I wasn't convinced this was going to work.

Before dinner I saw something that gave me more confidence I could pull it off. By the time we went to bed last night, I'd decided to start again. I might still finish this Denali piece eventually, but for this "Sashiko" project, I'm going in a different direction. So far, all I have is a picture. I haven't yet decided the best way to approach this. Here's your peek at my new picture.

Probably I'll start this today or tomorrow, but I need to think about how to get started. Of course, I'll keep tantalizing you with peeks as I go.

Last night's dinner was a recipe I'd saved from our Cooking Light Diet days. This recipe is in keeping with our new Mediterranean Diet goals. It was so tasty, I wanted to share it. These are Dried Cherry-Toasted Almond Turkey Salad Sandwiches. I didn't take a picture of mine, but this is the picture from the recipe. These were delicious, and so simple to make.

First off, I used one of the rotisserie chickens from the grocery store, so mine is actually a chicken salad sandwich. Also, we had a hard time finding pita bread in the grocery store. As we stood looking at the breads, we found them on the bottom shelf. (And who ever looks there?) So I ended up with these, but then realized I'd selected the wrong thing when I opened them up. These are "Greek Style" pitas. They're a flat bread. Some people might call it Naan.

So with that kind of bread, I ended up making them sort of like a Greek taco. I spread the sandwich filling on just half the bread and then folded it over. If you microwave it for about 15 seconds, it's nicely pliable, and it folded over without breaking. Then, I held my hand over it and smushed it just a little bit, and that made the folded over side stick to the filling. It was a tidy little package for picking up and eating. The celery and toasted almonds give it a nice little crunch, and the golden raisins and dried cherries gave it a good flavor. I'll definitely make these again. For now, we have leftovers for lunch.

And as long as we're talking about cooking, I might as well say that I'm making two salads this morning. Erik and Mae are hosting a backyard barbecue today. Matthew will be there as well. It'll be our first family get-together since arriving home. I'm so looking forward to seeing the kids. Erik is using one of his many Weber barbecues to make Pad Thai.

One of his barbecues has a wok attachment. It sounds fun AND delicious to me.

My contribution will be an Asian Coleslaw and a Snow Pea Salad. I'll take pictures and share the recipes in tomorrow's post.

Also today, I'll be picking another bucket o' weeds. Yesterday's bucket nearly laid me low. For whatever reason, I was completely wiped out after that. My knees were killing me, and so I came inside and iced my knees, had some lunch, and then took a nap. For the amount of effort, I was overly tired. Honestly, I don't have an explanation for that, and so I'm hoping it'll go a little easier on my body today. 

With all of that going on, I'm only hoping to have some time in the sewing room today. Just now it's time for some breakfast, and then I'll get busy with my slow-stitching. It's going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day planned for yourselves.